cks. That's not bad,
you know."

Three hundred sols a ton. A lifter went by stacked with cases of M-504
submachine guns. Unloaded, one of them weighed six pounds, and even a
used one was worth a hundred sols. Conn started to say something about
that, but then they came to the lift and were crowding onto it.

He had been in Kurt Fawzi's office a few times, always with his father,
and he remembered it as a dim, quiet place of genteel conviviality and
rambling conversations, with deep, comfortable chairs and many ashtrays.
Fawzi's warehouse and brokerage business, and the airline agency, and
the government, such as it was, of Litchfield, combined, made few
demands on his time and did not prevent the office from being a favored
loafing center for the town's elders. The lights were bright only over
the big table that served, among other things, as a desk, and the walls
were almost invisible in the shadows.

As they came down the hallway from the lift, everybody had begun
speaking more softly. Voices were never loud or excited in Kurt Fawzi's
office.

Tom Brangwyn went to the table, taking off his belt and holster and
laying his pistol aside. The others, crowding into the room, added their
weapons to his.

That was something else Conn was seeing with new eyes. It had been five
years since he had carried a gun and he was wondering why any of them
bothered. A gun was what a boy put on to show that he had reached
manhood, and a man carried for the rest of his life out of habit.

Why, there wouldn't be a shooting a year in Litchfield, if you didn't
count the farm tramps and drifters, who kept to the lower level or
camped in the empty buildings at the edge of town. Or maybe that was it;
maybe Litchfield was peaceful because everybody was armed. It certainly
wasn't because of anything the Planetary Government at Storisende did to
maintain order.

After divesting himself of his gun, Tom Brangwyn took over the
bartending, getting out glasses and filling a pitcher of brandy from a
keg in the corner.

"Everybody supplied?" Fawzi was asking. "Well, let's drink to our
returned emissary. We're all anxious to hear what you found out, Conn.
Gentlemen, here's to our friend Conn Maxwell. Welcome home, Conn!"

"Well, it's wonderful to be back, Mr. Fawzi--"

"No, let's not have any of this mister foolishness! You're one of the
gang now. And drink up, everybody. We have plenty of brandy, even if we
don't have anything else."

"You